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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
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More than 2,000 years ago, Marcus Tullius Cicero declared that "a room without books is like a body without a soul." But despite repeated forecasts that books would vanish, the soulless room remains a rarity. This is particularly true at Yale. Dorms are often awash in books whose titles speak volumes about their owner's interests. Sometimes, the holdings also mark the holder as a bona fide collector. "But there's a big difference between a collection and an accumulation," says Elisabeth Fairman, curator of rare books and archives at the Yale Center for British Art. "A collection is not just texts for courses -- it's about coherence and personal connection." Undergraduates here can see how their book collections measure up by entering one of the more unusual Yale competitions. In 1957, banker and bibliophile Adrian van Sinderen '10 established an annual book-collecting contest, and this year 31 students vied for the van Sinderen prizes: $750 for the winning senior and $500 for a sophomore. Last February, a team of judges, including Fairman, Beinecke curator Stephen R. Parks, and past van Sinderen winners James Prosek '97 and William Reese '77, visited contest finalists, who were picked on the basis of essays that described their collections and collecting philosophies. Reese, one of the nation's premier rare books dealers, explained that the judges weren't unduly influenced by a collection's cost or its subject matter, which ranged from bartending to signed editions of poetry to strength training. "Collecting is ultimately about focus and passion," says Reese, who was more interested in the effort each student made to secure books. Finalists unfamiliar with the used bookstores in New Haven and their hometowns didn't fare well, but this year, the judges were willing to overlook that stricture in awarding first prize to economics and linguistics major Xin Dong '03 for the 40-volume collection of Buddhist scriptures he has amassed on pilgrimages to temples in China, India, Korea, and the U.S. (Jason Farago won the sophomore prize for his collection of art and art theory books.) These sutras are "very rare," says Dong, who began this pursuit in 1995. "But because they're simply given away to devotees, they have no monetary value." There are, of course, other values. "I collect these out of academic interest, but they can also be used in the practice of Buddhism," says Dong, "as well as to practice my calligraphy." And then, there is simply the thrill of the chase. "Collecting
is in the genes," says Parks. "This contest shows that the book
is clearly not on its way out." |
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